Conventional office automation suites do not enable developers to easily define display rules, establish screen display methods, or define screen navigation paths for forms. For example, they do not enable developers to define which form should be displayed in the current screen and in following screens. As a result, additional development efforts are required to provide these functionalities. These additional development efforts can involve extensive hard coding and development time for each form in order to meet business needs.
Furthermore, conventional office automation suites containing forms modules are not integrated with other components related to general business rules. Consequently, problems arise whenever business rules are changed or when an application is expanded. For example, additional dynamic or static pages may need to be created according to changing business rules. Although many form controller applications currently available can help developers design form navigation, they cannot dynamically control the navigation flow of screens by the values entered into the fields or by user profile structures.
Moreover, conventional office automation suites are not integrated with process flow or roles-based structures and do not include granular functions that can be defined in different flow models. In addition, conventional office automation suites are not 100% web-based. In contrast, they require some custom applications to be installed on a developer's desktop or they require the developer to design the forms. Furthermore, after a developer designs the form flow, it still has to be deployed to production through the traditional change deployment process.
Thus, there is a need for improved systems and methods for defining a form navigational structure. For instance, there is a need for defining a form navigational structure associated with at least one node in a process flow.